I AM a product and proud supporter of our state education system. All my children attend state schools.
But it is not possible to defend Essential Learnings, which is damaging our state education system, eroding public confidence, imposing humiliating difficulties on our fine teachers, and, worst of all, is destructive of our children’s education.
The junk language used by the Education Department in its forlorn attempts to explain the inexplicable reflects something even more appalling: the lack of clear thinking underlying Essential Learnings.
Pushed on schools by a misguided minister with the inexplicable support of the teachers’ union, my experience is that this ideological nonsense is widely loathed by staff, students and parents.
Though this lamentable experiment with our children ought be ended as soon as possible, it won’t, because a minister has staked her political future on it and senior bureaucrats their careers.
And so, debate will be replaced by spin, directed conformity will be called extensive community consultation, those who question will be gagged and bullied, and illusion will deny reality. But then that’s the New Tasmania.
Richard Flanagan,
West Hobart.
